1) Day 3 Mech lays down the start of a gauntlet.
2) City 5S of GipFace's central airport is way more trouble than it's worth.
3) Combat areas are entirely in GipFace's favour.

3 follows from 2 which follows from 1, so it's best to start at the beginning.

Until his day three we each essentially have normal capture phases - sure I built a recon, but he can easily make sure he gets his stuff, he's Sami. I'm expecting him to try and recon in the east here, perhaps, maybe an arty? Maybe some weird voodoo saving for a B-Copter? Maybe some mysterious APC to support eventual mechs?

No, just a mech. Day 3. Day fudge 3. Essentially we have GipFace making a statement here - I don't care if you capture more properties in the center - go ahead, please do! You won't get an insurmountable lead against me, my VM will cut you down and win me the game regardless. You can't escape it. You can't win, this game is a formality.

I have few options here - I can split the center 50-50 and park artillery on cities and just wait out the VM - possible, but "just waiting out the VM" is much easier said than done. Obviously I wasn't confident in this idea - relying on "just infantry and arty" seemed too restrictive for some reason.

i could go aggressive with artillery - make the land claims I did and try fitting in an artillery to claim them somehow rather than two B-Copters. I felt this would be a blatant overextension and would leave me vulnerable to DT and B-Copters. It would force me to make terrible AA. It hindsight this was probably one the best idea - he wasn't capturing, he had no funds for B-Copters, and Kindle would take them away if he ever did accumulate them. Forcing him to use DT would be the ultimate solution! No VM to deal with!

Then there is, of course, what I committed to - a tank early, followed by B-Copters and some random AA to deal with a threat that was never there. Resulted in a playing field which looked impressive but in reality gave me no long term benefit - I didn't gain a single south west or north east city, I simply wasn't positioned to.

This leads me to where the battles took place - in the absolute worst places possible for me.

I discounted the bottom left because "omg the mechs r coming!!!", really that was about it. This was more than likely my best bet, considering I had an airport to deal with things and a lot of infantry to move to try and be the aggressor. A decent city spot to make attacks from, I could probably hold it too!

The top right I felt would simply take too long - would need an AA as backup, probably a tank to keep something to eat the AA away, several infantry to beat off the other infantry... eventually I make a half assed attempt here for meter but it clearly bites me.

For some reason I believed my hope was in the centre, holding that damned extra city for all it was worth. Stupid idea, holding a city in the range of an airport. Should have let it go after an infantry standing on it would be killed. Instead I end up parking a tank on it, wasting it's turn instead of letting it do something valuable like attack the west.

I believed the center was far from the mechs, so I could have plenty of hiding space. I was also generally conditioned to place the center of a map in high importance - just my style.

This leads to the final reason why my position looked so good for those few turns but was actually so terrible - I was consistently making inf vs inf attacks at 100 vs 120, and not getting any attacks in on cities. In fact, there was only combat near his cities, the ones I was trying to take with Blight - my own good play was my own problem! My cities weren't getting any action with directs, and by the time they were it was too late, mechs were threatening.

I build that second copter because I'm essentially committed to my actions - of what, at that point I have no idea. Disruption and damage control among the infantry is what I'm thinking. For some reason I think I can kill them all and keep them all away. Maybe if I had more time, but this was DS.

Final nail in the coffin is suiciding my inf base to get a power - but the game was long lost by then, no matter how "nice" the position may have appeared.

Game is lost around day 10 - there is no way for me to stave off a 5 mech VM, and no way for me to capture additional props in time - I can try to mitigate losses by perhaps switching the artillery, but I'm simply not in control at this point.

I'm kinda surprised that you went for the 'lol a recon' strategy against Sami - sure, it made sense in theory to take advantage of going first and build your meter early on, but you get in one attack that doesn't even stop a capture, and then you sacrifice the recon the next turn when you don't really need to. Gip wasn't even forced to build an early tank to counter it - you walked it right into his first mech. Copter disruption was more successful though, but the problem was that you were struggling to kill off Gip's units entirely - and with VM, even heavily damaged inf/mechs suddenly have a use.

To be fair to you though, I'm so used to AWBW that the prospect of such an early SCOP would have thrown me right off.

It took me a solid three minutes to fully comprehend your hair, Fallers. - DeoxyYes fal, you've got a good sense of style, you're clean shaven, and the cat on your head dares not move itself.
You look awesome. - Shift BreakerI swear, you two are the worst couple ever. You've somehow managed to PDA on the internet through text. - Xenesis

I built the day 3 mech because I was attempting a strategy that is viable in AW4: mechs before vehicles. The theory is that mechs will take some time to hit the front lines, while vehicles are able to catch up quickly. I don't think the day 3 mech was as much of a scare as Sven claims because it was eventually destroyed on day 9. However, it did buy some time for the other 3 mechs to advance.

Victory March was my only goal. I wasn't about to use Double Time because I believe Double Time is a trap. Why use Double Time when you can get a power that breaks a key fundamental of the game three days later? (Kindle's first Urban Blight was ready on day 9, while Victory March was ready on day 12) Victory March turns 1 HP soldiers into deadly pieces. No other COP/SCOP in the game grants that much power to a 1 HP unit. DS Sami is better than AW2/AWBW Sami because she is able to Victory March much earlier. In a way, she plays like AW4 Will: push for the game-breaking power, and if they back off, hoard mechs until they are forced to blink first.

Mind you, that is in an even situation. When I used VM against Sven, I was behind in units and position. In a losing position, VM managed to destroy 6 units, cripple 3, and capture 3 cities. And that's only the "worst-case" scenario. It would have been even more deadly had I not erred in the capture phase.

you walked (the recon) right into his first mech.
That was the only move he could do if he wanted to delay capture of the SW city near the river by a day. I suppose 1S 2E attack N would have been a better move, although the attack would have only dealt 4 or 5 HP because of no urban bonus. A 5 HP Sami infantry still captures in 3 days.

Anyway, we're planning to play a number of games in person after Christmas because I have a hunch that the current WWN tier list isn't as accurate as people think it is. Plus, I've just about exhausted all PVP knowledge in AW4, while Dual Strike has many questions still unanswered. The dynamics of Dual Strike are not the same as AWBW. It's a much leaner, faster game, and I have a idea about the "broken" tier that needs to be tested. I won't say what it is for now, but if my hunch is correct, it would be one of the most shocking revelations in AW. Sven believes it's a real possibility, but we need to play it out instead of theorytarding in #wwn about it.

basically in their own way. long COs brokenness is their long meters, short COs is crappy powers. the only way to get around brokenness is to tag with 130% people like sasha and colin. both are broken by themselves, except sasha's cop which lowers the enemy's meter. but put them together with sasha in front and they create one of the best tag teams in the game.

xenesis wrote:

hawkes nightmare wrote:
i only came here because i thought there would be pudding.

Played Von Bolt-Sasha vs Snifit (@Winding Resolution) in what should have probably been a "dream" matchup for Sasha. Sasha got spanked and Snifit resigned on day 11.

The problem with Sasha is that powers charge much too fast. If she saves up money, she loses. Plus, Von Bolt walked all over her with his superior D2D. Maybe she's decent in AWBW, but on DS (where she originated), I think she worse than Max and Javier 1T, who are currently rated lower. Javier 1T is probably better than Von Bolt because +30 DEF and being impervious to indirect fire for 6 stars is a poor man's Samurai Spirit. I'd even put Javier 1T over Jess and Sonja (but maybe not Rachel).

Also, a few weeks ago I played Hachi-Kanbei vs Sven on the same map. I think Hachi is the best CO in the game because he has the best megatanks in the game (because of his SCOP). The megatank is a trump and no cheaper unit beats it unless you outnumber it with multiple artillery, etc. Of course, you'll never do that against Hachi (again, because of his SCOP). Also, if Hachi manages two megatanks, the enemy will be too afraid to damage them because he can join them up for an instant cash boost, then use another SCOP to smash. I still need to test whether Hachi can totally dominate Colin or Grit.

DS' gameplay is nice and fast, so even though there's a bunch of infantry, it never stalemates. I'm liking it more and more. Unfortunately, I think after Olaf in the WWN tier list, there's a huge gap between the power level of COs.

So, a CO that's able to waste the opponent's funds, do a lot of damage to a lot of units, and get extreme firepower off bases (which is massively helpful if you have indirects) in a few short turns sucks? Okay, then.
Or I'm totally misreading, which is highly possible.

Sven and I played a Hachi vs Colin game and we ended up in a standoff draw. I think the broken tier is like a triangle: Hachi edges Kanbei (outnumber), who edges Colin (big stat mismatch), who edges Hachi (exponential $ growth and BB equalizer). Grit is like a Fire Emblem bow: effective against all of them, but not overly so.

Kanbei is good against Colin because he will win without first strike.
Matchups with 90/100 vs 120/120 end in 6/6.
On plains, they will end up in 7/6 with KANBEI having the advantage! And with morale boost Colin is unable to attack because it will end 7/4, even if Kanbei is sitting on a road. Imagine what happens if Kanbei's unit is sitting in a city...

The theory behind it is more complex than that. Colin would like to build as few vehicles as possible and form a skeleton defense. The rest of the funds goes towards Gold Rush. Now, in those obscenely-sized AWBW maps, this is completely possible. However, the map Sven and I have been testing on is Winding Absolution, a 20x15 map, which represents the standard AW4 PvP map area (225 to 400 square tiles).

Hachi doesn't pile on as much pressure as Kanbei. Hachi simply trades blows until Merchant Union is ready. Kanbei, on the other hand, forces Colin to build more units and spend more money to fend off the offensive. Due to how meter charging works, Colin will max out his meter fairly early. This is actually a curse; Colin is forced to use Gold Rush prematurely or discard extra potential charging. Doing the latter risks an overwhelming attack by Kanbei, because he'll get Samurai Spirit before you can use your third Gold Rush. DS charging "weakened" Colin because all the other COs can invoke their SCOPs much faster. But even using Gold Rush prematurely has the downside of allowing the opponent to attack right then and there. It's the best time because COs can't charge during powers.

In the case of Hachi vs. Kanbei, Hachi can outnumber Kanbei and get an edge. Hachi also has the megatank trump: a 100/100 megatank is still going to OHKO any of Kanbei's 120/120 units, even on a city. Colin can deal with this Hachi tactic because of his discounted nukes (black bombs). Kanbei, on the other hand, has the worst nukes in the game. That's where my idea of the triangle matchup came from, though Sven believes it's not quite clear-cut. I somewhat agree with him on that, I suppose.

Even these small amounts of play-by-webcam testing have proven to be real eye-openers. It's a shame that no one came up with the idea when Dual Strike was popular.

I'd go so far as to say that just like how DS Sami is better than AW2 Sami in spite of her nerf, DS Kanbei is better than AW2 Kanbei. Nonsense, you say! 120/120 is clearly inferior to 130/130! However, three main differences:

Samurai Spirit is undercosted for what it does and I truly believe it's better than Lightning Strike. In DS, we're getting Hachi SCOPs by day 9. Day 10 or day 11 Samurai Spirit, are you freaking kidding me? That is fast enough for Kanbei's infantry and the 4-5 vehicles he has at that point to overtake a contested front. Then he can just ride the property advantage to victory. Also, when you look at the counterattack power, it means that any equal/semi-equal direct attack you do has to send the unit down to 2 HP or else it's just a suicide.

The funny thing is, SS is more expensive than the majority of SCOPs. And only 4 of the 8 SCOPs that SS isn't more expensive than are more expensive, but these 4 have given reasons for that. And 2 of the other 4 are mass damage SCOPs.

The problem isn't SS being undercosted so much as overpowered, with defense in this game having heavy blame for that. It's basically a poor man's Lightning Strike.

Gip streamed his DS, with Sven giving him commands through IRC. It takes hours, but it works. Kinda.

"So when I say the fudge shaman flies he goddamn well flies and that's that." - Narts"My motto is that there are far too many women in the world to waste time with men." - thefalman"It's just that I'm not really aware of how a common conversation goes." - Imano Ob, talking on MSN about talking on MSN"As for FE8, that was IS' variant of Man Spam - Dudes with Swords edition." - Xenesis

GipFace wrote:(I'm still waiting for one of those so-called time survival pros to put up a video of a single-segment <5-min run. But of course, that will never happen. LOL)

most people can't make quality vids like you do.. if I were to try time survival on video, I'd be in such an akward position that I'd get 1 minute slower than my potential just because of it, as far as I know STL never made any AW video without emulator, which makes me think he also has trouble recording the DS, while Fidel and Swifty barely even write D2Ds so I wouldn't expect a vid from them (not to mention Swifty retired from the internet)

there is also SterlingFalco who currently should have the #2 best time in the world, but I think he also retired... his time is from back in 2006, which is pretty crazy

edit: now that I think about it there's also Starkiller who is insanely fast, on par with Swifty, but he never submitted a Time Survival score, I don't think he knows the strategy, but if STL wanted to tell them to him, he can also make good quality vids so it could be a possibility

GipFace wrote:
(I'm still waiting for one of those so-called time survival pros to put up a video of a single-segment <5-min run. But of course, that will never happen. LOL)

Why are u talking like that? I remember ur strats were so bad that u accused the best players (SterlingFalco/Swifty) of cheating.
Besides noone is interested to do a single-segment run, noone wants to rely on the luck he gets in this run or making sub-optimal strats which require less luck.

Why, yes I did, because your comment was stupid. "plz credit the person who thought up the strat" Uh, I already credit warsworldnews.com in every video. If you want your actual name in the video, too fscking bad. I don't even credit myself for the runs I came up with because no one really cares. And if you do, then you need to grow up.

How about this? Why don't you give me $80 to cover my webcam, and then I'll put your name up on all the videos you want, okay?

(The time survival stuff was a tongue-in-cheek remark and I'm not going to bother responding to any cheesy defenses. Whatever you say, there are still 0 videos of it.)

Well if u use the strat of someone u normally give credits, but anyway the only thing is, to quote the vid where i posted my comment:
"There are many videos of C26, but this one puts them all to shame. Watch as the final mission is beaten in under four minutes!"
Pretty strange to write stuff like that if u just replay what someone else wrote.
And in the next sentence u prove ur lack of knowledge:
"Note that due to randomness, it is possible to get either 431, 435, or 439 points with this method, depending if Caulder builds 0-2 extra units. Obviously he wasn't so kind here. =/"
This is complete BS.
I don´t think anyone minds if u show a strat of him and not write his name, but u shouldn´t brag with work of someone else...

And too poor for u, u think there are no better strats then urs in Time Survival. I can only laugh at this

Considering you've included Olaf in the 'usable but not ridiculous' tier (presumably for 'lol mass damage' factor), would Drake and Hawke not belong there too?[/theorytard]

It took me a solid three minutes to fully comprehend your hair, Fallers. - DeoxyYes fal, you've got a good sense of style, you're clean shaven, and the cat on your head dares not move itself.
You look awesome. - Shift BreakerI swear, you two are the worst couple ever. You've somehow managed to PDA on the internet through text. - Xenesis

I imagine Olaf's there more for the constant snow = extra firepower factor. Blizzard is pretty freakin' scary in this game, especially considering how his 7-star SCOP lets him use two blizzards in a row.

Ah yeah, I forgot that Olaf actually got a firepower boost in snow in AWDS. Point taken.

It took me a solid three minutes to fully comprehend your hair, Fallers. - DeoxyYes fal, you've got a good sense of style, you're clean shaven, and the cat on your head dares not move itself.
You look awesome. - Shift BreakerI swear, you two are the worst couple ever. You've somehow managed to PDA on the internet through text. - Xenesis

Low/Bottom tier questions:
What about Andy, then? This idea was suggested in an old topic. Seeing that Megatanks are part of the metagame now (from your discussions), his SCOP makes his Megatanks hard to kill. The HP boost can even be converted into funds by joining.

Mid tier questions:
Rachel's missiles can blast Megatanks into uselessness given the Megatanks' high costs and the way the missiles target (at least, the missile which targets the highest funds). In the old days her SCOP was valuable for breaking chokepoints. Has the metagame changed such that it's no longer all about infantry and artillery?
Is +Movement less useful now? In the old days, Adder could create mind games (the equivalent of a combat trick in Magic) by saving his COP and leaving his units 1 space out of the enemy's range. Should Jess be slightly higher up because of this?

If Megatanks are all the rage, mass damage COs might be more usable. Speaking of which, Hawke used to be the "average" CO, the middlest of the mid tier. Who fills that role now?